Intel’s new technology : The Itanium 2

Ravi Madapati 
Faculty Member
Icfai Knowledge Center

64-Bit computing  

In 1994, Intel learnt that HP was working on a 64-bit PA-RISK, which radically improved processing speed. Intel was only making 32-bit chips, but clearly saw the need to make 64-bit chips. Some Intel design teams advocated getting to 64-bit chips by merely extending the existing 32-bit architecture.

HP entered an exclusive agreement with Intel to use Itanium 2 by the end of 1994. A computer’s speed is defined by how fast it digest the “bits” (The 0s and 1s), which composed all information in the electronic world. A 64-bit computer is significantly better than a 32-bit machine. Pentiums and other processors were 32-bit chips. They read 32 bits with a tick of their internal clock (For instance, the internal clock moved 4.3 billion times a second in a 4.3 gigahertz Pentium). Itanium 2 could read 64 bits. 64-bit chips also facilitated faster information retrieval. They also let a single processor access data from larger amounts of memory, an important consideration for running databases and other large applications. The 32-bit chips, such as the Pentium II, III and 4 and all the existing Xeons from Intel, could juggle only 4GB of memory. 64-bit chips could also handle tremendous amounts of memory. As corporate software evolved, so did the need for 64-bit chips. Intel’s ambition is to craft a high-end processor architecture that the entire industry would be forced to use. When Intel finally launched its Itanium 1 in the summer of 2001, it was a failure.

Not only it did not run 32-bit applications in the way Intel planned, but also its performance was not more convincing than a Pentium. In July 2002, Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, relaunched the project calling it Itanium 2. Itanium 2 contained a 400MHz bus that is 128 bits wide, compared with the 64-bit wide bus on the original Itanium, a change that facilitated greater data transfer rates. In addition, improvements have been made to the compiler; the software that organized and scheduled how different resources on the chip would get deployed. Security is also improved. Like other chips, Itanium 2 could wrap data within varying levels of security. Itanium 2 could hold more data at the highest security levels because of sophisticated data management techniques.

Competition

Intel’s chip rivals such as IBM, Sun and AMD had already launched their 64-bit chips. Digital Equipment began selling its high-powered 64-bit Alpha chips in the 1990s. Sun’s high-end Unix machines used the company’s 64-bit UltraSPARC chips. IBM made another 64-bit chip, the Power4. For the first time since the IBM PC exploded onto the market in 1981, PCs were losing some of their luster. Instead of more powerful PCs to run faster software programs, many customers just wanted cheap PCs to get online. Making low-cost PCs meant using low-cost chips; something that rivals such as AMD seemed to do better than Intel. AMD gained market share from almost nothing to about 18% by pricing much lower than Intel. AMD is expected to launch its 64-bit computer chip, Opteron, by mid-2003. Opteron represents its biggest gamble ever and is a direct threat to Itanium 2 processors. Though Opteron is designed for high-end servers it would also run like 32-bit (Pentium and Athlon) processors in most PCs. Opteron would run 32-bit Windows and Linux software, as well as future 64-bit code. A PC version of Opteron is also expected to be available unlike Intel, which is not planning to launch the PC version of Itanium 2 immediately.

Desktop computers, and most servers, used processors that read data from memory, 32 bits at a time. A computer running a 32-bit processor could only use a maximum of four gigabytes of memory chips. All other data has to be stored on hard drives, where it could not be accessed nearly as fast, so when working with multi-gigabyte databases, 32-bit computers worked more slowly. In theory, a 64-bit processor could access vastly more memory: about 18 billion gigabytes. In practice, the first-generation Opteron would only be able to handle one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes of data. But that is still enough to make Opteron-based machines well suited for big number-crunching jobs. Unlike Itanium 2, Opteron would not have the problem of software rewriting and hardware reconfiguring because it contained all the features of a standard X86 chip. It is designed to run software as efficiently as any Pentium or Athlon processor, and future 64-bit programs as well.

Competition

Launching Itanium 2

References

[1] The core architecture for all the processors, IA architecture, is the same. The difference is whether it is built on 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit platforms. All processors provide software compatibility and a huge support infrastructure to the embedded designer.

© Icfai Press. Global CEO • August 2003, All Rights Reserved.